Dreaming for Freud Page 7

  With her fräulein, too, she read other advanced books, even foreign ones which she shared with her, she goes on, showing off her erudition, listing them: Flaubert’s “Simple Heart,” and Dostoyevsky—“I do love Dostoyevsky!” she gushes, “his characters are all so very miserable they make me feel happy in comparison.”

  “A great writer, Dostoyevsky,” he admits.

  “And I read Anna Karenina by Tolstoy—and even Walt Whitman. My brother gave me von Hofmannsthal—what a good-looking man!” she says. “I caught a glimpse of him in a café in Vienna one evening and almost fell in love with him immediately—and my brother encouraged me to read him.

  “My brother does encourage me to learn but when I do study, Mother scolds me and says I spend too much time reading. I am not allowed to read in the morning, for example. Can you imagine? I have to sew or do something equally dumb, dumb. Otto never really takes my part against Mother or even Father. In the end he is just like Father—and as much as I love him, I have to admit he says one thing but acts differently. He and Father are both such hypocrites! Hypocrites! Or anyway they are too timid to stand up for what they believe,” she says angrily. Her brother does not dare act in a rebellious way; he does not like a fight, particularly with her mother. He is always the conciliator in the family.

  But she could speak most frankly to her French fräulein, about so many things—intimate, womanly things. She says, “In some ways it was easier speaking in another language. Do you know what I mean? And women speak a different language from men, don’t you think? It would be much easier, yes, and less frightening to talk to a woman who would understand,” she concludes triumphantly and crosses her arms on her chest.

  “But not to your own mother, I gather?” the doctor suggests, knowing the answer there.

  “No, not Mother,” she is forced to concede, but then, annoyingly, takes the pretext to complain at length about her mother.

  “I have never really been able to talk to Mother, which is so sad. She doesn’t seem very interested in, well—matters of the mind,” she says in her pretentious way. “I know she loves me, and she says she wants the best for me, and perhaps she really believes she does,” she says, obviously trying to be fair, “but she doesn’t understand my interest in books and the way the mind works, or the answers to so many questions about life that trouble me. I once actually told her we had nothing in common, which was cruel, I know, and she was very hurt, and I’m really sorry for that.

  “Poor Mother—it’s not really her fault at all, you know. She was given so little education, and she can hardly spell and is often so sick herself with—whatever it is she’s got, and she hardly ever opens a book, or only the kinds of books that tell you nothing about life,” she says. “It may not be her fault, but she is very ignorant about so many things and she prefers to believe what is convenient, to maintain that everything in life is for the best: ‘Tout pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes.’”

  “Voltaire?” the doctor hears himself ask.

  She rambles on about her mother. “In the end Mother is just as bad as Father, perhaps she’s even worse. She never challenges what she must know are Father’s lies! Why does she not stand up for me, when she knows what I say is true! How can she be such a coward! Why do women never stand up for one another?” she asks, sitting up in her anger, waving her hands around wildly, her cheeks flushed.

  All her mother cares about are the household chores and her own illnesses. When she thinks certain rooms need cleaning, she locks their doors, and makes the servants open the windows, even on the coldest of days. “You would hardly believe my poor brother. He hates to confront Mother. He’s such a coward! Once I found him cowering in his room studying, all muffled up in his coat and hat and gloves with the windows wide open in the middle of winter! And when I said, ‘What are you doing? Are you mad?’ He just said, ‘It’s not so terrible! I’d rather not make a fuss.’ At least I shut the windows for him!” she says.

  He thinks of his own wife, who has a very similar preoccupation with household cleanliness. He allows her to rule over her domain and does not interfere with the rigid rules for the hours of the meals. He gives her all his earnings to keep in a strongbox and must ask her when he needs money for his cigars or his purchases of antiques, of which she disapproves. He accepts her scolding meekly, if he ever spills or breaks anything or soils the carpets with his muddy shoes. He is a henpecked husband, he considers, though her control is curtailed to domestic matters. He has managed to preserve certain prerogatives naturally, such as having his family travel second class while he rides in first on the trains, in order to travel in peace and quiet and have a moment for his important work.

  He has tried to talk to Martha about his work, but she gets that anxious, distracted look in her eyes as he speaks and doesn’t seem to hear what he is saying, or she changes the subject, or often finds some pretext to escape, getting up and leaving the room, going on some absurd household errand or even to the bathroom. He has the uncomfortable feeling she is shocked. Is it possible she considers his theories pornographic? Obviously she does not enjoy discussing his work. And even Minna, who tells him she admires it and often accompanies him to the Kaffehaus in the evenings, or on his travels, does not always seem able to grasp the importance of what he is saying. How much easier it is to speak with Fliess, who has a completely open mind and is able to consider any and all possibilities.

  But the fräulein and Frau Z. were women she could talk to freely, the girl says.

  “And you feel you could trust them?” he asks, aware of what her response will surely be.

  “Of course,” she admits, “confiding in them did have its disadvantages. What interested the fräulein most, I came to discover, was love or what she thought was love. The only reason she was so kind to me, I gradually understood as I got older, and the reason she tried to stir me up against Mother and Frau Z., was because she was attracted to Father. When he was present, she was all charm and sweetness, and when he left, she lost interest and dropped me completely like a hot cake. She was only using her intimacy or what I thought was intimacy with me as a way to get closer to Father. Everyone! Everyone is in love with my father! They either want his body or his money,” she says, lying back down and relapsing into sullen silence, beating her fists against his beautiful rug.

  “And you think it is his money I want?” he says eventually.

  “Well, in the end, are you not on Father’s side?” she asks.

  “You don’t believe that, as a medical man, a man of science, I have your well-being or, at the very least, a respect for the truth at heart?” he asks, shifting around in his chair. Yet he cannot entirely ignore this young girl’s words.

  He thinks of what she dared to say about the harm the learned men in the medical profession do. His brilliant mentors come to mind, those men who came before him at the university in Vienna and who blazed a trail, great thinkers like Rokitansky, Meynert, and above all von Brücke, who has influenced him perhaps more than anyone else; what does she know of them? Is she unaware of the reputation of the medical school in Vienna and how people flock there from all over the world?

  Still, her comment hit a sore spot. He could not help thinking of poor Emma E. and Fliess’s operation on her nose, which came to him in a dream he used in his book. He recalls Emma E. telling him, her voice heavy with sarcasm, “So this is the strong sex,” when he had almost passed out in her presence. A fainter who frequently succumbs to strong emotion, he had had to leave the room at that moment and restore himself with a glass of strong cognac. He can vividly recall that poor woman’s blanched face, her protruding eyes, the clots of blood and the fetid smell, when the surgeon had pulled forth half a meter of gauze that Fliess had left behind in her nose. What overwhelmed him then was the feeling of remorse for having recommended this surgeon to her in the first place. Why had he not realized what was happening?

  When Mathilde
had once put a bead up her nose, he had divined the problem quickly enough from the odor. He does not intend to make that mistake again.

  Was the operation entirely necessary? He thinks how the woman had come to him with her vague symptoms of nosebleeds, depression, and menstrual cramps and how he had sent her to Fliess who had removed the turbinate bone from her nose and transformed her entire face with the operation. He has let Fliess operate on his own nose twice. His operation on Dora Breuer, too, was most successful. The young girl who, come to think of it, is about the same age as his new patient, was very grateful. But poor Emma will never look the same again. Yet the dear woman does not seem to hold it against either of them, and indeed, is particularly interested in psychoanalysis.

  “But you are on father’s side. He has brought me here, and he is paying you to get me to do as he wishes, to go along with his plans. He is just using me as bait!” she says.

  “Your father has his intentions, no doubt, and I certainly have mine, but surely we have the same goal: your health and well-being and the cessation of your symptoms and your suffering. My goal is only to find the truth, a truth that you may not yet know or wish to recognize.”

  “But is it not a truth that is convenient for you and perhaps also for Father? Is it not a truth you want to believe?” She goes on, “What do you really think of Father? Do you trust him? Does it not just suit you like my mother to pretend to believe him? You must know all about his ailments. And now, if I have understood rightly, Mother suffers from the same shameful ailment, too, which is why we both have to go to stay in the big boring old hotel in Franzenbad to take the turbid baths and drink the acrid waters and sit at endless meals in the hotel dining rooms with all the other old, rich, sick people. Mother’s body is weeping, weeping because of my false father! And my own body weeps, too!” she admits.

  He listens to her words, watching her open and close her reticule and dip her fingers repeatedly inside. He is conscious of what she is saying, her fingers chattering, giving him their message wordlessly.

  “And you don’t think you might be responsible yourself for this?” he asks her.

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “Have you not perhaps been touching yourself for your own pleasure, your own hidden and secret desire, and causing this discharge that comes from such unhealthy practices? Can you admit to this? To be honest with yourself is good practice, I assure you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she says angrily, her face very red, her eyes flashing as she sits up on the couch, reminding him again of his first love, Gisela Fluss, in her furor.

  “Was this not the reason why you have gone from one doctor to the next, afraid they might find your secret, your shameful secret of private pleasure, rather than their incompetence?” he asks, rather pleased with his powers of observation.

  As the girl leaves his room, dragging her foot, she does not even look up at him or acknowledge his presence in any way. She does not bother to shake his hand, let alone bob the little curtsey she has obviously been taught is polite with an adult in his position. He sighs and can only hope he has not said too much too fast, that she will come back.

  VII

  * * *

  SECRETS

  SHE PUSHES OPEN THE DOOR slowly and looks inside the room. There is no one there. She goes into their well-polished and silent drawing room with its closed velvet curtains and well-dusted artificial hydrangeas on the mantelpiece. She stands still in her coat and hat and leather gloves, only the afternoon noises from the street coming to her. She goes over to the shiny grand piano and surveys the room. She bows to an imaginary and applauding audience. The audience applauds louder and louder as she takes off her gloves slowly, strips off her coat.

  She is giving a concert in a great concert hall. She is wearing a splendid green satin gown. She smiles and bows to the applauding audience and sits down very upright and opens up the shiny grand piano. She takes out her music, adjusts the height of the stool, and strikes the keys loudly with aplomb. She is playing the difficult Mozart sonata in A minor that she admires, touching the keys with emotion, playing with brio, until she stumbles and plays a wrong note. Then she gets up and goes out the door and comes back into the drawing room and bows again to the applauding audience, and starts over again. She repeats this performance again and again, until finally her mother puts her head around the door and says, “Darling, do you think you could possibly play something else?”

  She bangs the piano shut, gets up, and drags herself up the stairs, both her legs aching terribly, a burning pain down her side, her breathing labored. She goes to her room, slams the door shut, and throws herself onto her canopied bed and weeps. She has pain down both legs, her stomach cramps, and she is coughing. What good does this doctor do, she thinks as she pounds her pillow. Perhaps electricity, cold baths, brushes thrust down her throat, or even hypnosis would be preferable to him! At least they would not make her feel guilty! Anything is better than that! How can she continue to go back into that small, smoky room with all its mysterious, ancient objects, its books on the beginnings of civilization, and that horrible, horrible man!

  She gets up and runs her fingers fast over her own books in the bookcase above her desk and finds Goethe’s Sufferings of Young Werther. She has read it several times with delight. The young hero—though she is not quite sure just how young he is—suffers as she does. He feels life with the same passionate intensity. The book, she is certain, though she is a girl and probably younger than the hero, was written for her. For her. Reading those pages, feeling all the things young Werther feels gives her a warm feeling, a feeling of not being so entirely alone. Like her, young Werther has little time for the insincere, boring, snobbish people around him, people who are perhaps interested in his mind but not his young heart. The young Goethe wrote these letters just the way she writes her diary, she is certain, to tell the truth about life, though the letters were made up just as her diary is.

  She takes out the little key she keeps hidden among the book’s precious pages. She opens the drawer to her desk, where she keeps her diary, a fat, well-thumbed book with a blue leather cover. She sits down before her desk, writing feverishly.

  She has kept a diary since she was twelve or perhaps thirteen. She doesn’t write every day and she only writes down what she imagines and would like to see happen, rather than the real events of her life, which are so monotonous and boring. When her mother found her diary and thought her made-up account was true, she was very shocked! “Why on earth would I write about my own boring real life?” she had asked her mother, who looked hurt. And she has even given herself a new name in the diary: Stella Schonbrunn; Stella, which she knows means star in Italian, and Schonbrunn for the summer palace of the imperial family, with its wonderful park and all the animals. A grand name for a girl who will, she is certain, be grand one day.

  She writes the name at the top of each page in ornate script with large loops and curls on the S’s. Just doing that makes her feel better, open to new possibilities. She finds that pretending to be someone else, SS, allows her to say things she would never dare say otherwise, and do things on the page she would never dare do, though she often feels and thinks just what SS—as she thinks of herself—does. She likes the double S, which entwines like two amorous snakes. She has even drawn them, thick cobras, their heads turned toward one another, tongues entwined, and colored the entwined snakes in gold and green with shiny scales like a Klimt painting. Come to think of it, they are like her and her brother when they were small and would touch their tongues together and then laugh.

  Sometimes, she does other little drawings on the pages, though she has never been good at drawing. There is even one of her mother’s new green hat that Frau Z. made, which she thought was ridiculous, with its long feather, and sometimes she does drawings of herself doing handstands, which she would do secretly when her legs were not in such pain, or other not
at all ladylike things which she likes to do when no one is looking. At the end of some of the entries she has written: “By an undiscovered genius!”

  Today she writes: “I feel excitable and vehement, both of which are entirely justified. Sometimes, I think I exist just to get in a rage! I know I’m young but surely I understand much more than the adults around me do!”

  She feels this diary is the only place where she is still free to make things up as she wishes, things she can control, in order to recapture something from her wonderful, wild, rebellious days as a child. Here she can see in her imagination what the adults around her cannot punish her for.

  Here she has her young engineering student come to her as she runs from Herr. Z. at Lago di Garda. Together they will take the ferry across the lake.

  “Suddenly, he is there beside me, looking down at me with his large brown eyes. I stare back at his fresh, flushed cheeks and adorable dimples as he smiles delightfully at me. I like his young and innocent face, his tense, taut muscles, the way he stands on one foot, leaning back against the railing of the ferry.”

  They take it to a small island, surrounded by willows which trail their branches in the water. As they stand side by side in the wind, holding onto the railing, they watch the waves slap against the side of the ferry, and the spray rise in the air. The ferry, by a strange coincidence, is also called La Stella. She can see the white painted letters on the side of the boat. She smells the murky odor of the lake water and sees a rainbow in the spray. The student leans across and takes off her gray glove slowly and carefully, peeling it back like the skin of a fruit and as though he were unsheathing something precious, a fragile soul, to be handled with care. He does not let go of her hand.